Lastly, for references, last semester, I did a group project on mood input. Here is the user experience video of the app Mood Mapper where users were asked to input their mood through out the day using a timer. The interface was prototyped using Flinto.

This interview was conducted to explore current health tracking device users and their needs, wants, and behavior.

Biography of subject

Madison is a 28 year old female who lives and works in Los Angeles. Her career is in the apothecary and commercial business. Her day job often entails her managing the editorial, logistical process, and clients in an apothecary company. At night she is usually casted as an extra in commercials at least once a week. Her body image and health is extremely important to her, so she is pretty avid at exercising and eating a balance diet. She just recently purchased a Fitbit three months ago.

Scripted questions and Transcript

When do you put on your Fitbit?

I wear it every minute of the day

Do you use the silent alarm feature? Do you look at your Fitbit in the morning? If so when? What data are you looking at?

I use it to track my sleep if I remember. It’s interesting to see how often you are restless and whether you woke up. I like using it in the shower.

Do you share your data or achievements with your social circles?

Sharing weirds me out

Do you use the water and calorie intake?

yes

What do you do for physical activity? How has it changed your physical activity been?

Going to the gym is about the same. I sometimes work out longer because of the fitbit. I also opt for stairs and walking more everywhere I go because of it

2:20 secs: I take more steps, I sometimes walk in circles and take the stairs while watching my steps change.

Dislikes?

When I have to charge, it doesn’t calculate your pulse. Which it would give more accurate view of your heart rate and calories you’re really burning. It’s basically now using an educated estimate.

Style is also a problem. If they came out with more options that are not as expensive. I don’t like to take it off if I am going to a meeting.

Do you set goals for yourself? If so what are they?

I have goals for steps, distance, minutes of being active throughout the day. Calorie intake and balance. How many you burn how many you consumed. Water, making sure I’m drinking the water throughout the day. It’s very satisfying to fulfill it by seeing the colors change from orange to green. It also sends you messages through phone alerts or emails. It’s one of those things if you are goal-oriented person, it’s really satisfying.

Which goals are you more obsessed about?

I am bummed about certain goals , others are whatever.

How often do you go to the gym?

I started running more. I use to not run at all.

How often do you check your Fitbit?

4-5 times an hour if I am active. If I am sedentary, I wouldn’t check it as frequently.

If you were to prioritize reasons why you track your health could you tell me what they are?

reach fitness goals short term- gain weight

long term health to quantified self. quantified selfers.

deeper level to control.

Takeaways

Madison was the perfect candidate to talk to as an avid health tracker user. She is addicted to using this device because she is goal-oriented. She is so much so goal-oriented that she described one of her frequent behaviors which was to check whether her goals have all turned green (signified reaching goal). The Fitbit also supports this behavior and gives her contingent feedback when she would accomplish a goal, and it also delivers micro feedback when she would take each step.

Her short term goals behind using the Fitbit really says that she is concerned about the immediacy of improvements of herself, and that she is self-conscious about her body image. She is also fascinated by the data the device collects and the feedback she receives that she wouldn’t otherwise receive if she didn’t wear the Fitbit, which leads me to believe that if there was another feature added to the device she would use it. For example heart rate, perspiration, and stress.

The secondary reason why she uses the Fitbit is to benefit her long term health. I think that she would be interested in monitoring her mental health because the mental and physical performance of one’s health attributes to each other.

I think users like Madison who enjoys quantifying herself would consider quantifying her own emotions if she had the opportunity to. Thus, the next step in research would be to have her log her emotions and location throughout the day and compare and contrast her Fitbit data to see if there are any relationships between her environment and her emotions and her physical activiy.

Joseph Saavedra’s project Citizen Sensor, is a wearable piece that records data about a user’s environment, i.e. pollution via the phone, and displays it on the web so that the user can visualize, share, analyze and discuss their data with their community or even from around the world. I’m fascinated by the idea of big data treated almost as an open source product in which you can choose to share or privatize. Similarly to my Palestine’s State major studio project, where I parsed tweets of violent key words from their data base, and displayed it on a map of the West Bank and specifically around the Palestinian villages to showcase how eventually, these territories will deteriorate from this aggression.

Connor’s project Rob3115 is an interactive graphic novel that is influenced by the reader’s brainwaves. Emotichat by Decho Pitukcharoen uses computer vision, facial recognition and biological data technologies to “enrich” the chatroom experience by changing the typography and animations of the words. Mixed Reality Living Spaces by Bernardo Schorr reimagines the way humans would live in a 100 square feet space by immersing users in different augmented environments. I found all these projects really appealing because I see the potential of tracking emotions and moods, and having your environment change based on your mood. The goal of this potential thesis idea is to improve behavior and mood based on an augmented environment. Hilal Koyuncu’s project is similar in a sense where sensors are attached to the user, and physical objects are affected by the user’s haptic feedback.